How to Draw a Mutant

Step 1.

Welcome to the "How to Draw a Mutant" tutorial :D To start off, we have a basic skeletal under drawing. It's just a stick figure with a couple of spheres for the head and chest. Notice how the character's hunched over and has its neck craned to the side.

Step 2.

For this kind of human mutation, I wanted some exaggeration in the facial features. The bony ridges around the eye sockets are extremely pronounced, and even run back along the top of the head. The eyes will be sunken, and the character will be screaming in agony. I provided plenty of room for an open mouth with the jaw position.

Step 3.

When a human screams, the veins in their neck tend to pop out. That's going on to an extreme here, along with a lot of stretching, tearing skin. Notice how the wrinkles stretch away from the center line of the torso. In this step I also added a lot of wrinkles on the face, and of course added the mouth.

Step 4.

I thought it would be really cool to have his eyes pointing in different directions. I think it adds to the feeling of pain and agony this guy's going through. I also added the nose and cleaned up the jaw line at this point.

Step 5.

Before drawing the arms, I wanted to get the placement of the collar bones and pectoral (chest) muscles. You could really consider the collar bones to be the first part of the arm. If you point your arm to the ceiling, or shrug your shoulder, the collar bone will follow. You might notice I drew his left (our right) pectoral disappearing under a couple of lines. Those are the beginning of the deltoid (shoulder muscle), which overlaps the pectoral.

Step 6.

With the collar bones in place, we can easily locate the deltoids. This is extremely important, especially since we're looking down on the shoulder. This will be a 3/4 shot of that arm, so I outlined the biceps and part of the triceps.

Step 7.

Here I finished up the forearm, but I left it open at the end with a couple of weird folds of skin. I debated turning this into a mutant hand, but it ultimately ended up fairly normal. At this point I also drew the outer edge of the ribcage and outlined the abdominal (stomach) muscles. It's a little distorted, but if you look you can see a semi-hourglass shape. I wanted the stomach to be somewhat caved in. The mutation process burns a lot of calories, after all. Some of the skin from the stomach is going to hang over his belt line.

Step 8.

Yeah, the hand ended up a bit gnarled, but it'll look downright pretty in comparison to what's coming. I drew in the ribs here. The guy looks very gaunt. The abs are defined, but don't have the shape of a body builder's abs. These are more like drooping tear drop shapes.

Step 9.

Here I began drawing the pants. I decided to give him shorts because I wanted to draw some legs. That, and I actually hate drawing fabric. One detail I like to include is the fly. I try to draw seems whenever possible, but drawing the fly seems to communicate that these are indeed practical pants, and not just a trash bag with holes cut in it.

Step 10.

The second pant leg. Not much to say here. Take a look at the gap between the leg and the pants. You basically have a ring of fabric wrapping around the leg, so at extreme angles you can't get away with just drawing a line across the bottom of a pair of pants or shorts, or even a shirt.

Step 11.

Whoa, what happened? I decided to lay down some more guide lines so you can understand the shape of the legs. His right foot is obviously having some problems. I decided to totally mess around with the poor guy's toes and turn them into long, finger-like appendages. When you do something like that, you need to at least TRY to think about the skeleton underneath before drawing it.

Step 12.

What a nice pair of human knees. Knees are actually pretty hard for me to draw. They look different from every angle, and in every position. Very annoying. I decided to keep them pretty simple here. There'll be enough detail further down the line to make up for simplicity here. My main concern was indicating the leg muscles.

Step 13.

I suppose if this was the full extent of the mutation, this guy wouldn't have it that bad. Still, that is an ugly foot. I drew the toes with different types of toenails just to mix it up and emphasize the fact that this guy is actively mutating in front of us. He may not be done for a while. The regular foot serves as a comparison point, as if you really needed one.

Step 14.

I added lots of detail to the mutated foot, here. I love those lumps and crevices. You could think of it like having bubbles in the skin. First figure out the outline and then picture them bulging outward like a balloon. Ew and ouch at the same time. I also added some definition to the arm here.

Step 15.

What in the --?! *Ahem* More guide lines for you, so you can see where I'm headed. What we have here is a giant, mutated arm... not one... not two... but THREE shoulders. Yikes. Each of those additional shoulders will have an appendage growing from them, but at this point I hadn't decided what they would look like. I did have a plan in mind for the main arm, though...

Step 16.

It was important to work on the transition from the neck to the shoulders. I kind of overdid it with those neck stretches, so rather than run into problems later I decided to tackle this area now. I just pictured lumpy flesh balls separated by a few folds of skin. Yummm...

Step 17.

With the shoulder drawn, I moved into the upper arm, defining the biceps. Notice how the biceps are the same size on the mutated arm as on the regular arm. It's the other muscles that have bulked out around it. I took my time defining the armpit. You can see how the raised shoulder and collarbone work together to lift the pectoral muscle. I also added some random, veiny details to the shoulder. I actually don't like looking at this kind of stuff, but it's so fun to draw. Does that make sense? Don't answer that.

Step 18.

This shape basically covers the extensor muscles on the forearm. While very lumpy and mutated, I still want to keep in mind what goes where under normal conditions. Those rounded shapes are exposed... bulbous... organs, I suppose. They could even be eggs or something. I don't know, but I picture them being somewhat clear... possibly liquid-filled... ok, moving on...

Step 19.

Since I drew the guide lines, I decided to use them and skip ahead to the main fingers of this hand. The hand is pointed slightly toward us, so I wanted to draw the closest part first. It made it much easier deciding what kind of skin folds to add later on when connecting everything together. If I had worked from the wrist outward, I would have had fewer options when I got to the fingers as far as placement, angle, etc...

Step 20.

Yeah, this was much easier than the other way would have been. We have some nice shapes resembling the normal hand structure, and the perspective on the hand is pretty much just how I want it.

Step 21.

Without having it colored, this is really starting to look like a crab. Actually, that was my idea going into the arm. Each finger has a different style of tip, and I even drew a pseudo crab claw one what used to be his middle finger. Even with the extra appendages, you can still identify the thumb, point finger and middle finger.

Step 22.

I'm still thinking "crab" at this point, so the general shape of this limb resembles a crab leg. I added some shell-like panels to mix it up and differentiate this limb from the main arm. For the fingers, we have a normal thumb, a finger with more fingers growing out of it, a carrot, and a swirly thing. There's also a tooth-like thing growing out from the base of the shoulder. What?

Step 23.

The third appendage is still in the process of forming. See how we have a nice progression of mutation between the three arms? I liked the repeating shape of the arms and fingers curving out and downward to the right, so I continued that with a few appendages growing from the back of the head. This seems help give the image an animated look somehow. Little wormy things growing outward. What will they become???

Step 24.

And there you have it -- the finished line art. I had a lot of fun working on this, and I hope you had fun following along. The main thing is to really think for a moment about what you're going to draw before you draw it. Even with something as seemingly random as a mutant character, there's still a lot of thought that goes into the design. What grew from where? How fast did it grow? How did that affect the skin? What SOUNDS would the body make while mutating? All of this stuff is important to think about while drawing. I hope you can use some of these thought processes to design some mutants and monsters of your own. Be sure to post your artwork when you're finished. Have fun, and take care.

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